by Dan Poblocki
Poppy, Azumi, and Dash grabbed one another’s hands. Together, they stepped through Larkspur’s broken gate and out onto Hardscrabble Road.
The race for survival begins here! Turn the page for a peek at
Horizon, by Scott Westerfeld.
Next question,” Molly said. “How many miles of wire are in this airplane?”
“Um, a lot?”
“Put your brain to work, Perez. Estimate!”
Javier Perez sighed. “If I get close, will you stop bugging me with these questions?”
“Nope. You need the distraction.” Molly clutched her book of airplane trivia and grinned. “I’ve got at least fourteen hours’ worth. Enough for the whole flight!”
“You wanted to sit by her!” Anna said from the row behind, and Oliver laughed beside her.
Javi groaned, wishing the plane would take off so he could lean back and pretend to sleep.
Telling Molly that he was afraid of flying had been a terrible idea. Because that made it her job, as team leader, to distract him—with engineering problems, of course. At Robotics Club every afternoon, Molly always talked while she worked, explaining what she was doing, challenging others to do the same. For her, making robots wasn’t just a hobby, it was a conversation.
The funny thing was, the distraction was actually working. Once Javi’s brain had latched onto her question, the plane became more than a huge unknown carrying him away from home for the first time ever. Now it was an engineering problem.
How many miles of wire? Javi thought.
The four members of Team Killbot, along with their adviser, Mr. Keating, were sitting in economy. Brooklyn Science and Tech had lots of rich people who donated money to the school, and when the team had qualified for the Robot Soccer World Championships, some millionaire had stepped up to pay travel costs.
But first class to Japan for five people? Nobody had that much money to give away.
Even so, this was what Mr. Keating called “fancy economy,” designed for fourteen-hour flights. Javi’s seat was surrounded by buttons and lights and a video screen. All of which were connected to wires, right?
He’d already tested the buttons on his armrest. They controlled the angle of his seat, a reading light, the screen. There was a button for summoning a flight attendant, and a rocker switch with volume symbols. There was even a little remote control for games (which also seemed to be a phone, in case you needed to call someone from halfway across the Arctic Circle).
Javi found himself wanting to strip it all down, to see those wires, motors, and gears out in the open. He’d been taking things apart as long as he could remember, starting when his mother had let him take apart her busted microwave when he was five years old.
He imagined the wires under the cabin floor, snaking up and around the curves of the chair. And another bright web above him, bringing power to all those lights and air blowers in the ceiling—
“Conjectures?” Molly prompted. “Conclusions?”
Javi’s brain buzzed. Each seat would need at least a hundred feet of wire, and there were about five hundred people on the plane. That was ten miles right there, on top of the ailerons and engines, the cockpit crammed with gauges, the extra wires needed for the huge business class seats a few rows ahead.
Too much to calculate, so he multiplied his first guess by ten.
“In the whole plane, maybe a hundred miles of wire?”
“Not too bad.” Molly waved her book. “But it’s more like three hundred. A technical tour de force!”
“Okay, wow,” Javi said, though amazement was the surest route to more trivia questions. “It seems like a waste, using a machine this complicated to fly our dinky little robots to Tokyo.”
“The Killbots are not dinky,” Molly said. “They’re the reigning US champions of robot soccer, junior division!”
Javi shrugged. “May I remind you that the other team’s robots got broken in shipping? We lucked into this.”
“We would’ve won anyway.” Molly’s expression dared him to argue.
Javi wasn’t sure. He’d seen videos of the robots built by the unlucky finalists from New Mexico—scuttling four-legged scorpions that whacked the soccer ball with their tails. In stark contrast, the Brooklyn Killbots were toasters on wheels. Mindless bullies that swarmed the ball, knocking other players out their way.
“Like how five-year-olds play soccer,” one of the judges had muttered in the semifinals.
And there were, what, maybe twenty feet of wire in each Killbot?
Not exactly a technical tour de force.
Last night, Javi’s whole family had gathered for a send-off dinner: uncles, aunts, and cousins all telling him how proud they were. His mother had told stories of him helping on her superintendent rounds when he was little, fixing locks and faucets at age seven. But for the whole dinner he’d felt like a fraud.
What kind of engineer was afraid to get on an airplane?
“Next question,” Molly said. “How many Aero Horizon flights have ever crashed?”
He stared at her. Was she just trolling him now?
If building robots had taught Javi anything, it was that way too much could go wrong with machines. No matter how carefully he tested them, the Killbots were always doing unpredictable stuff in the middle of a match.
He thought about those three hundred miles of wire in the airplane, the millions of rivets and seals and screws, the engines and tanks full of flammable fuel. All those parts that could break, warp, fail, or explode.
“I’m going to go with … two?” he said hopefully.
“Nope,” Molly said. “Zero!”
“Really?”
“Yep. No crashes in the whole fleet, in forty years.”
“Huh.” Javi felt a relieved smile reach his lips, and his irritation with Molly faded. Even when she was trolling him, she always had a plan. “Thanks.”
She shrugged, as if to say that his fears were forgotten. “Just enjoy the flight, Perez. We’re going to win for real this time.”
Javi gave her a fist to bump. “Team Killbot!”
Mr. Keating leaned forward from the row behind. “Um, guys. Maybe no more discussion of airplane crashes?”
“Actually,” Molly said, “we were discussing the total absence of airplane crashes.”
“Still,” Mr. Keating said firmly. “Some people are nervous about flying.”
“Not us engineers.” Molly smiled at Javi. “Next question …”
“Last question,” Javi pleaded.
Molly looked like she was about to argue, but then a ping went through the cabin, and a voice announced that the doors were closing.
Javi swallowed. Last night, he had imagined himself jumping up and running off the plane when this moment came. But thanks to Molly’s distractions, he was managing to sit here quietly.
“Fire away,” he said.
“This is my favorite one.” Molly clutched the trivia book close, guarding the answer. “What do flight attendants call it when the oxygen masks drop down?”
Javi frowned. “There’s a name for that?”
“It’s secret flight attendant slang. Let me give you a hint: The oxygen sensor gets tripped, right? And suddenly all those rubber masks fall out of the ceiling. Everyone’s freaking out, screaming like animals. So what do flight attendants call it?”
“Um, a really bad day at work?”
“Nope.” Molly gave him a pleased smile. “They call it a ‘rubber jungle.’ Get it? Because everyone goes primal, and there’s all those masks hanging down like vines! And usually it’s just an accident, because of a broken sensor.”
Javi tried to smile back at her, but now he was thinking about those hundreds of masks up in the ceiling, each tightly wound in its little compartment, like snakes ready to spring out and start a panic.
Just one more thing that could go wrong.
ENDPAPERS
Endpaper photos ©: 2-3: wallpaper: A_l.i.s_A/Shutterstock, flower wallpaper: jannoon028/Shutt
erstock; 6-7: Shadow House illustration: Shane Rebenschied for Scholastic; mansion: Dariush M/Shutterstock, fog: Maxim van Asseldonk/Shutterstock, clouds: Aon_Skynotlimit/Shutterstock, grass and trees: Maxim van Asseldonk/Shutterstock.
INTERIOR
Interior photos ©: Chapter 3: balloon clown: Comstock/Getty Images, balloon clown face: nito/Shutterstock, raised arm clown: Ljupco/Getty Images, raised arm clown face: Alex Malikov/Shutterstock, clown with bows: Elnur/Shutterstock, far left clown: sdominick/Getty Images, far left face: Jeff Cameron Collingwood/Shutterstock, far right clown: sdominick/Getty Images, far right face: Alex Malikov/Shutterstock, clown hat: Charice Silverman for Scholastic, tents: Westend61 Premium/Shutterstock, Chapter 10: woman with tilted head: Andriy Blokhin/Shutterstock, woman with hair draped: Kamenetskiy Konstantin/Shutterstock, woman from back: Kamenetskiy Konstantin/Shutterstock, woman shaking head: KatarinaDj/Shutterstock, poses: Keirsten Geise for Scholastic, foreground: sturti/Getty Images; Chapter 16: wreckage: StockPhotosLV/Shutterstock, car: Grafissimo/Getty Images, interior: Tiramisu Studio/Shutterstock, wall: boonyarak voranimmanont/Shutterstock, ladder: Meng Luen/Shutterstock, ghost: Gemenacom/Shutterstock; Chapter 21: shed: Brad Remy/Shutterstock, sky and grass: Dudarev Mikhail/Shutterstock, forest: Evannovostro/Shutterstock, lightning: Charice Silverman for Scholastic; Chapter 24: paths: PhotoRoman/Shutterstock, landscape: Mike Pellinni/Shutterstock, Great Wall: fotoVoyager/Getty Images, sky: Igor Kovalchuk/Shutterstock, mansion: Dariush M/Shutterstock, fog: Maxim van Asseldonk/Shutterstock, clouds: Aon_Skynotlimit/Shutterstock, mansion composite: Shane Rebenschied for Scholastic; Chapter27: path: Textures.com, skull: witoon214/Shutterstock, big bones: Photographicss/Shutterstock, small bones: Picsfive/Shutterstock, shoe: Keirsten Geise for Scholastic; Chapter31: hand: Viacheslav Blizniuk/Shutterstock, sofa: PinkyWinky/Shutterstock, frame: CG Textures, glass and composite: Charice Silverman for Scholastic; Chapter 32: room: Library of Congress, painting top right: CG Textures, painting on easel: CG Textures, easel: frescomovie/Shutterstock, Matilda: Larry Rostant for Scholastic, cat mask: CSA Plastock/Getty Images; doll: unclepepin/Shutterstock, carpet: CG Textures; Chapter 38: wallpaper: Larysa Kryvoviaz/Shutterstock, girl: robangel69/Fotolia, frame: Chatchawan/Shutterstock, melting effect: Charice Silverman for Scholastic; mantle: Zick Svift/Shutterstock, photo and clock: CG Textures; Chapter 43: chimney: T W Brinton/Shutterstock, iris: Lopatin Anton/Shutterstock.
Dan Poblocki is the author of several books for young readers, including The House on Stone’s Throw Island, The Book of Bad Things, The Nightmarys, The Stone Child, and the Mysterious Four series. His recent novels, The Ghost of Graylock and The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe, were both Junior Library Guild selections and made the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list in 2013 and 2014. Dan lives in New York in an apartment where the ghosts, thankfully, are the quiet kind. Visit him online at www.danpoblocki.com.
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First edition, September 2017
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